This week’s Time Capsule looks at a mill accident, a prison escape, a gunshot wound, Sara Tokars and the F-22.

100 years ago …

In Friday, March 27, 1914 edition of the Marietta Journal and Courier, the front page reported that the miller on Whitlock Avenue had a very narrow escape from a horrible death just before noon the previous Saturday. The man had gone into the engine room to put a belt on a pulley. When he reached up a set screw in the pulley caught his clothing. The man was then whirled around the shaft several times. Fortunately, on the first spin his foot struck the gas generator on the engine and knocked it away which caused the engine to stop. The slackening speed of the spinning shaft allowed him to fall down and saved him from “being beaten to a pulp.” However, three of his ribs were broken, one foot badly crushed and both of his legs were paralyzed.

Also that week there was an ad that dominated most of the second page of the paper for McClure’s Annual Housewives sale. For 10-cents each, shoppers could buy a scrub brush, a clothes line, a pair of children’s hose, a pair of ladies’ cotton hose, a ladies’ gauze vest, Huck towels, table napkins, a 10-qt. galvanized water pail, enamelware, a yard of colored oil cloth, a yard of embroidery, 5 bars of toilet soap, 16-oz. of talcum powder, a 8-oz. bottle of peroxide, a cloth brush, a card of pearl buttons, a horn comb, a whisk broom, a good pipe, scissors, box paper, crepe paper, gold band plates, a mixing bowl, a flower pot, a pudding pan, and a can of paint, stain or enamel.

50 years ago …

Nineteen prisoners in the Cobb County jail were reported in the Monday, March 23, 1964 paper as having torn bricks from a shower stall wall and crawling through the hole in a bid for freedom over the weekend. Sheriff Kermit C. Sanders said the men were lodged in the downstairs “bull pen,” which was an exercise area for the prisoners. To keep the guards in the dark, the prisoners had hidden the debris from their work in a mattress cover and placed a bed sheet over the gaping hole. After the plot was discovered through an informant, a brick mason was called to patch the hole and line the shower stall with sheets of metal. This was the fifth time that prisoners had tried to dig out through the shower.

Also reported that day, the Type III Sabin oral polio vaccine was administered to 32,245 Cobb County residents bringing the two-week total of immunizations up to 90,557.

In the Wednesday, March 25, 1964 paper it was reported that after five hours of deliberation, a Cobb County Superior Court jury upheld the 1963 tax revaluation program which had been challenged in a civil suit by eight county property owners. Had the verdict favored the plaintiffs, the collection of some $5 million in county property taxes would have been nullified.

Another story that day reported, the second suspect in the attempted burglary of the Woolworth store in Mableton was listed in “good” condition at Kennestone Hospital recovering from a gunshot wound and a self-performed operation. Sheriff Sanders and two deputies found the suspect at the home of a relative in Douglasville weak and woozy from a gunshot wound and blood loss after the man tried to cut the bullet out on his own with a razor blade.

20 years ago …

Cobb’s public safety director Robert Hightower was reported in the Thursday, March 24, 1994 MDJ as having been ordered not to discuss the ongoing investigation of two Cobb detectives accused of taking money for a movie deal related to the murder of Sara Tokars. Ralph Hicks, a Senior Cobb Superior Court judge, ruled that Hightower must refrain from discussing the case until the internal investigation had been completed and a decision was made. Ten days earlier, Hightower and District Attorney Tom Charron had announced at a press conference that the two detectives had signed a February 1993 movie deal with a California production company that paid them each $4,500 up front and were expected to later earn as much as $125,000 apiece.

In the Friday, March 25, 1994 paper it was reported that the General Accounting Office recommended delaying production of Lockheed’s F-22 by seven years, saying the current front-line fighter could outmatch any potential enemy. The report by the investigatory arm of Congress was a declassified version of a GAO study that examined the capabilities of potential enemy aircraft.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

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